Hot about Harry

All the world is a-buzz about Harry Potter. The last book in the series – or so JK Rowling maintains for now – will be released soon - tomorrow, actually - and pre-booking has been phenomenal, the news has it. Now there are fears that the pages have been leaked on to the Internet, which means that some spoilsport somewhere will announce how it all ends and who dies…or doesn’t. And there will be a great deal of sound and fury, signifying less than usual, about who should have done what to who, when, how and why. By that, I do not mean more than a degree of piracy and hijacking of a manuscript that has, so far, been so carefully guarded.

But be that as it may, what matters more is the phenomenon that is Potter. Harry Potter. I first met him some years ago, when the first book was released. The publicity and hype were low key, especially as compared to what it is today, and all I had to do was to walk into a book store, any book store, and pick up the volumes I wanted…which was all of them that had been published until then. Gradually, I accumulated more, until the sixth one, when the hype caught up with me. I ignored it, at first, then got interested, then, just before the book was released into the market with lots of noise about pre-booking of copies and who would get what with it for free, I logged into a shopping site on the Internet and got my own copy. It was bought at a price lower than those commonly known, and I felt rather chuffed about that.

And then the book arrived, much to my delight. Happier were various friends at the office, who preferred to pop the bubbles on the plastic wrap rather than read what was swathed in it. So to a chorus of snap-crackle-pop, I started reading…but was not happy. By the time I got to the end of the thick and unwieldy volume, I had become rather bored, fed up of the darkness and, more, of the time it took for it to get light again, if it ever did, that is. Harry spent too long being morose and heartbroken and all that bad stuff, and while I was not against that sort of thing in a book of this ilk, I did not really want to spend so long over it. When Dumbledore died, I figured that everybody would weep – both in the book and those who were fans of all the characters – and they did, so even the reactions were predictable and thus boring.

I figure there will be more of that in this, purportedly the last in the series. Two major characters will die, said JK Rowling when she announced that she was done writing the Harry Potter novels, and I know that there will be tears and grief at unprecedented levels when that finally happens. People will comment on the Internet and in print, flooding the airwaves and cyberspace with chat about what did happen, what should have happened and what should happen if Rowling is persuaded by legions of loyal fans to continue with the fun and games of her series. In all this, people seem to have forgotten that this is just a fictional saga, albeit a fascinating one, and not a particularly profound one loaded with literary merit either. It is well written, yes, readable, absolutely, but classifiable with the greats of English literature? Hardly!

By tomorrow noon-time, people will have read most of the last book. And will be talking about it. There may even be details of what happens, who dies and Harry’s fate available for discussion in chat rooms, review boards and on trains, planes and automobiles all over the world. And while it may take me a few days to catch up with it, since my copy will arrive via courier, which can be unpredictable in schedule, I will know, at long last, what happened to Harry. And so, probably, will you.